


I Didn't Invite You Over (But You Can Stay If You'd Like)

by cecilia095



Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:05:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5903530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilia095/pseuds/cecilia095
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jess Day isn't someone you'd find in Nick Miller's circle of friends. <b>AU.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	I Didn't Invite You Over (But You Can Stay If You'd Like)

**Author's Note:**

> [you’re sleeping on my best friend’s couch while your house is being renovated and you have really weird habits like attempting to sing opera in the shower and you keep eating all of my cheerios.](http://perfectlyrose.tumblr.com/post/114778551317/aus-for-your-consideration)
> 
> I had to.

"So she's not  _your_ friend..."

"I mean, she knitted me a scarf once two Hanukkah's ago, so we're kind of tight."

"But she's not  _your_ friend."

"Nicholas, she's a five-foot-four woman sleeping on our  _couch_. She doesn't take up that much space!"

"She ate my breakfast yesterday, man. My breakfast."

"What, your Toaster Strudels? Good. You need to start eating healthier. More grain. I bought you Cream of Wheat. It's in the cabinet to the right."

"...But she's not  _your_ friend, Schmidty."

—

Cece promises them it'll, "Only be a week, I swear!", but it's Day Eight and she's  _still_ here.

Okay, Cece doesn't even live with them, technically, so Nick's pissed about that because it's  _his_ house and he can't even sneak ice cream at four in the morning anymore because Cece's bug-eyed, polka-dot-skirt-wearing best friend is always on his couch.

Jess Day isn't someone you'd find in Nick Miller's circle of friends. Seriously. She can't take a shower without singing _You're The One That I Want_  from Grease, in full, both parts, five times. Do you even know how much hot water that is? 

On Day One, she came with two full suitcases and asked Nick to help her bring them in. "All of this for a  _week_?", he asked, and then he looked at her like she was crazy. (No, okay, she might be crazy though, he's still not exactly sure.)

"Schmidty, what the hell is this? Can't she stay at, I don't know, Cece's  _actual_ place?"

Schmidt and Cece are dating, they have been for years, but Cece has her own place that she's at maybe like, point-one percent of the time, so -- 

"No. Cece's ceiling fell down last week." He says it so casually. "Jess has to stay here."

So she does. It's Day Eight and they have no Toaster Strudels left and Jess is on Minute Forty-Six of her second shower today. Also, their DVR is filling up, and it's not Nick who's recording every  _Law and Order: SVU_ episode in existence.

—

"So... They done with your house yet?"

It's Day Nine and Nick is off and Jess is off too, because it's a Saturday and she's a teacher and -- "Where else would I have to go on a Saturday, you know?", she asks, laughing into her cereal.

 _Your own house_ _, maybe?_ , Nick thinks. "That sucks," he says when Jess tells him the guys working on her New And Improved Outdoor Patio Area (-- who  _has_ one of those?) say it could be another four, five days. 

Jess sets her cereal down on the coffee table and looks at him, biting down on her lip. "I know you want me gone," she says, and her glasses fall to the middle of her nose, "but I had no where else to go. My friend Winston offered, but he has a cat, and I'm  _super_ allergic."

"Maybe he could lock the cat up? Do they make those? Cat cages?"

Jess wrinkles her nose. "Umm... I don't... think... so?" Then she stands up and grabs her bowl of cereal. "Look, I'll try not to annoy you too much," she says, and Nick pretends he has no idea what she's talking about. 

"Come on, I know I annoy you, Nick."

"You know what, Jess? You kind of do."

—

She breaks her promise.

It's two in the morning and she's watching this movie  _super_ loud.

Nick barges into Schmidt's room to complain about it first, but then. "Ew! Why do the two of you have sex so quietly?! At  _least_ make noises I'm able to hear outside the door before I just... storm in here."

Schmidt looks up from his position above Cece and winks at Nick. "Nicholas, if you wanted to see my penis, you could've just  _asked_."

"You're an idiot," he says angrily, and then he turns around and faces the door because he's seen enough of Schmidt -- and Little Schmidt -- for a lifetime. "Cece, your friend is  _obnoxious_. If I have to hear that stupid --" He wrinkles his nose and starts to sing. " _I've... haaaad... the_ \-- You know. That one. If I have to hear that one more time, I'm throwing the couch in the dumpster behind the loft. With _her_  on it."

Cece shoos him away with a hand. "If you tell her to lower it, she will," she says. "Or she might make you sing along. It's really a fifty-fifty thing here."

—

"O-Oh, hey." She's surrounded by crumbled up Kleenexes and a half-eaten pack of Oreos and half of the blankets from their hallway closet. "I didn't hear you."

"Yeah, maybe your movie was too damn loud!" Subtle, Nick. "Hey, you - You okay?" 

He only asks because she's got a smudged line of mascara down her right cheek and enough Kleenexes to mimic the time last winter when Cece and Schmidt and Nick all had pneumonia at the same time.

"Oh, did you hear Dirty Dancing?"

"Who _didn't_?" He shakes his head. "Sorry, yeah, I did, but it's okay. I wasn't asleep anyway. I was up masturbating."

"Honesty." She points a finger at him. "Loft Rule Number Four-Hundred-Seventy-Six."

"Schmidt gave you the list? And you  _memorized_ _it_?"

Jess shrugs like it's no big deal and then wiggles over to the right side of the couch to move some blankets out of the way for Nick. He doesn't sit down, though.

"My boyfriend broke up with me today," she says after a second of silence. 

Nick sits now. If he knew her better, he'd take a hand to her knee or throw an arm around her shoulder and say something like, ' _There, there. You're a solid eight. Fine, you're a ten, but stop singing in my damn shower!_ ' Instead, he just breathes out an, "I'm sorry".

"We had -- We had all of these plans for the house, you know?" He does, but only because it's all she's been talking about for the last nine days.  _My house, my humble abode, the patio is quirky but not_ too _quirky, the pattern on the curtains in the kitchen matches this pattern on a skirt I bought in 2006!_ Yeah.

Nick's never had a 'pla-', let alone a  _plan_. Girls don't ask Nick Miller to move in with them. Girls don't even say 'Yes' to second dates with him. "I've lived with Schmidt since we were what, eighteen? So no, I don't know, but I'm sorry."

She reaches in her lap for the remote and un-pauses the TV. "Want me to rewind? You missed the best part."

Nick lets her play half of the movie. (' _The best part is half of the movie? I don't believe ya'._ ' ' _Have you not seen Dirty Dancing, Nick? It's legendary._ ' ' _Don't say that word. Schmidt says that word when he's describing his penis._ ')

—

On Day Ten, he wakes up before her, mostly because she stayed up until five in the morning and cried her eyes out over Spencer and his perfect, perfect hair and the way he let her wear a t-shirt with a Jam pun on it around the house. 

He leaves a new box of Toaster Strudels in the freezer and writes on the front in black marker: 'To Jess -- I'm sorry guys suck. Dirty Dancing is an OK movie.'.


End file.
